You may have grown up in a household where kids were not a part of the everyday budget planning. Back in the day parents were more private about financial matters, but I’ve found that involving kids at an age-appropriate level with household budget plans helps them become financially savvy adults. While I’m not telling you to divulge all your household finances, perhaps there’s a middle ground where you can include kids in the household budget plans. Today we’re sharing some tips on how you can include the kids in this process so that they have stronger comprehension skills when it comes to money management.
Determine What to Share
Your first step in including the kids in household budget plans is to figure out how much financial information you’re willing to divulge to your kids. Figure out what part of the household budget you’re comfortable with sharing. Once you have determined what part of the household budget planning your kids will take part in, you can move onto the next step.
Create a Budget Template
There are many free printable budget templates available online. Simply do a search with your favorite search engine and find a budget template that will suffice. Once you have found the right budget template printable for your household budget plans, proceed with setting a meeting with the whole family to go over your budget plans.
Discuss Expenses
Now that you’ve sat down together as a family to discuss household budget plans, discuss expenses. Be sure that each of you has a little notepad to write down what expenses occur within the home. This can be food expenses, clothing, monthly bills and so forth. Your kids can create a list based on what they “think” parents are paying for items they need.
Communicate Plan
Once your kids and you have created a list of expenses that incur within the household, have an open discussion regarding which expenses truly occur and create that one expense list. This will help you to evaluate spending once the adults put their income into the budget template. Working with income vs expenses, have your kids help you develop a budget.
Keep it Balanced
Now that you have all of the data compiled to analyze income and expenses, you can easily have your kids work their math skills to determine how much money should be saved weekly to go towards expenses and discuss which expenses may be removed. This is a great way to teach kids about creating a reasonable budget and learning to remove unnecessary spending to ensure the household budget remains balanced.
About the Author – Brandy Ellen Tanner is a Positive Lifestyle blogger who works from home while raising her 3 children. Learn more about Brandy at BrandyEllen.com and read her other parenting articles at ParentInfluence.com.
Tags: budget, finance for kids, financial planning, finlit